MP Evans in court over sex charges

A senior MP accused of a series of sex offences is due to appear in court.

Nigel Evans resigned as deputy speaker of the House of Commons after being charged earlier this month with two counts of indecent assault, five of sexual assault and one of rape.

The Tory MP for Ribble Valley in Lancashire has protested his innocence and pledged to “see this through to the end” after being accused of offences against seven men.

The 55-year-old made a personal statement in the House of Commons the day after he was charged, claiming that facing the allegations was as hard as dealing with the deaths of his mother and brother in the past few years.

Evans, who lives in Pendleton, was first arrested in May, then bailed twice by police, being re-arrested in June and again on September 10, when he was charged with the offences. He will appear at Preston Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday.

The indecent assaults are alleged to have been committed between January 1, 2002 and January 1, 2004; the sexual assaults between January 1, 2009 and April 1 this year; and the rape between March 29 and April 1 this year.

He dismissed the original claims against him in May as “completely false”, and said they had been made by two people he had “regarded as friends”.

In June, after his second arrest, he said: “I continue to refute all allegations.”

The Swansea-born MP was one of three deputy speakers elected in a secret ballot of MPs in 2010. Later that year he came out as gay, saying he was ”tired of living a lie”.

Evans was a vice chairman of the Conservative Party from 1999 to 2001. When Iain Duncan Smith became party leader in 2001, he was promoted to the shadow cabinet as shadow Welsh secretary – a post he held for two years.

MP Evans in court over sex charges